Meerapur, Madhya Pradesh:
Even as the country celebrates sixty three years of Independence, freedom is still a distant dream for many. Hunger and starvation stare at this growing and flourishing world power.
Meerapur village, a glaring example of this reality. This remote village on the outskirts of Madhya Pradesh is a tribal belt where most families are forced to fast through days together and sleep through hunger pangs.
Rajesh Gond, an adivasi daily wage labourer. He was after he stole a sack of wheat from a well to do neighbour.
When asked why he had to resort to this desperate measure? Rajesh's father Santosh replied " He stole in hunger and desperation, he is not a thief."
Having gone without food for days, Rajesh couldn't see them in that state, hence an act of crime born out of anxiety.
"Please release my son, he is not a thief." Rajesh's father kept pleading.
Even today, as they sit for their supper, there is hunger in abundance but food in shortfall. The family of ten shares six rotis. They don't remember having tasted dal in the near past. One time meal lasts them three days and the struggle continues.
This is not the condition of just one odd family, but a fate shared by almost all houses.
"We just eat once in the morning. We skip the other two meals" said another villager.
Unemployment , lack of education, and opportunities, reasons could be innumerable. But aren't sixty three years more than enough time? Did we not hear our politicians scream at the top of their voices during elections? What about the crores pumped in employment guarantee schemes?
The National Rural Employee Guarantee Scheme that promises every villager 100 days of work a year is almost absent in needy villages like Meerapur. Most of the job cards are blank after 2007
The sarpanch, surprisingly an adivasi woman is a sign of empowerment but, may be not really so.
"I can't read or write. Ask the secretary," says the Sarpanch when asked about the implementation of the employment scheme.
The secretary however claimed that there was job.
"We are giving a lot of work, there is no shortage." He said.
But ask other adivasi villagers and they say, "What work? When we ask for work, they say they don't run a charity."
One may not see smiling and content faces in the village, one may not find jobs, but what one can see are instances of rampant corruption in the village.
The village appears to be in shatters, roofs hardly supported by the walls, roads that lead nowhere except to the board that reads that this village road was made under NREGA with four lakh rupees.
Poverty and distress stare out of every corner of the Meerapur village. This is certainly not the story of the only village of Independent India. Many Meerapurs exist and are in the making.
So even though we are celebrating the day of Independence, it is but not the time to call the country completely free.